While I have no doubt that many discussion boards have suffered under competition from social media hubs such as Facebook and Twitter, those sites aren’t killing off every board on the Internet. But board administrators will have to recognize their true purpose in publishing if they are to help their boards survive.

Why are some boards thriving while so many others whither over time? As with many other online efforts, the answer is found in its publishers’ commitment to community – not simply to amassing a collection of readers, but creating a true community where participants inform and care for one another.

Discussion boards, by themselves, are simply a tool – as are blogs, wikis, emails, text messages and, yes, even news articles. While any of these tools can provide value to a publication, as other tools come along to compete with it, these tools’ value to a publisher ultimately is measured by the value their content provides to readers and users.

Discussion boards proliferated online when they were easy to set up and provided the only way for large groups of people to communicate with one another. They’re still easy to set up, but now readers have so many other places to gather and communicate, such as Facebook, Twitter and now, Google+ (which I finally did get on, by the way. Here’s my link.)

Of course boards that can’t offer their readers something more than that competition are going to suffer. While that’s no big deal for cooperative boards, run by volunteers who never made any money from their sites and who are happy to shut down and let Facebook do all the work, this is a very big deal for publishers who grew to rely upon income from these boards.

If you’re earning a living from publishing, you ought to be paying attention to what’s happening to online discussion boards, and learning these lessons so that your publication doesn’t suffer the same fate.

Don’t focus on tools – focus on what you can do with them. Like newspaper publishers needed to learn to see their publications as something more than a collection of staff-written articles, discussion board admins needed to grow their sites from simple boards into true community hubs. That might mean expanding beyond the board to add blogging, news articles, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages to provide multiple avenues of communication for readers. And it might mean that board administrators themselves grow from simply managing the board tool to becoming leaders willing to advocate for issues and causes in the community’s best interest (as the best newspaper publishers have done for generations).

Remember as well that as a publisher or a featured writer on a website, if the only way that people reading the site are communicating is with you or through you, you don’t have a true community. You have a kind of cult of personality, one that will whither without your daily participation. You must find ways to get readers engaged with each another, and ideally in ways that get them engaged with each another in common cause offline as well as on. Message boards can continue to be part of this mix, but if the board’s identity needs to extend beyond the board tool itself.

Your community must provide value to its financial supporters, too. This isn’t simply about selling advertisers access to your readers’ eyeballs (though that can be part of the financial value you provide) – this is about creating community engagement that creates value for people, businesses and organizations in your community who are willing to pay to support it.

Yeah, this is harder work than simply opening a vBulletin account. Not everyone who attempts this hard work will survive in the online publishing businesses, either. But those who do prosper will be the ones who have found ways to lead and develop communities that can grow beyond their message boards.

For example, his retort in the early 1980s that unemployed rioters should ‘get on their bikes’ as his father did and look for work made him a hate figure on the Left. (Admittedly this did not take much effort, given the poisonous atmosphere of UK politics at the time.) He has spoken out against the European Union and even suggested that traditional Conservative voters should instead support the Euro-sceptic UK Independence Party, infuriating many in his own party.

In addition, some of his comments on race and multiculturalism have been equally controversial, though he has also denounced the neo-fascist British National Party. This abrasive, uninhibited approach earned him the nickname of ‘semi-house-trained polecat’ via the late Michael Foot, but also cemented his reputation as a hardman of the British mainstream right.

Despite this, he is also doing something very interesting on his blog, hosted by the web site of the London-based Daily Telegraph newspaper. Namely, he replies to comments made by reader in the main body of his blog posts, structuring them as if taking part in an informal discussion:

I think “dirlada” was right. Any one in any walk of life may make honest mistakes, even sensible mistakes, but in that recent incest case it was over 100 people from 28 different agencies, all making some pretty obvious mistakes which was the worry. And right again, “Bionic Raspberry”. What about the offenders and the extended family too?

Oh, “crownarmourer”, what a temptation! Me as Lord Protector. No, I do not think so. I sussed out how power corrupted him when I was a 15-year-old history student.

Again, I must tell “incensed” that I simply am not Mr Tebbit. I lost that title. I don’t mind Tebbit, Norman or, as cabbies usually address me, “Norm” but I am not “Mr”. And I hope that you still might see the difference between the EU and the USSR. Millions of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and others who have experienced both can do so. Oh, and just a thought: were not the progenitors of the BNP ready to sell out to Hitler?

Whereas other columnists may occasionally reply to comments as commenters themselves, Tebbit seems unwilling to maintain such a barrier between blog and response. Instead he selects what he believes are either the most interesting posts made, or the ones that he believes require the most refutation. This is curiously inventive, cementing as it does, a direct connection between him and his readers. If we consider that online journalism’s strength is that it allows such a two-way conversation, even in a textual medium, then Tebbit is unusual in that he treats this as an essential part of the process, but also leaves aside the traditional aloofness of the journalist in doing so. He blogs, they read, they comment, he reads in turn and comments in turn. It is both cyclical and personable, but also an acceptance that what the reader says and thinks is at least as worthy of consideration as what the author writes, within some parameters – Tebbit still chooses what to reply to, whereas the reader still chooses what to comment on.

Tebbit also refers to each commentator by name, or at least, screen name. Again, this implies a greater intimacy between reader and author, but also a shared subjectivity – Tebbit picks comments, not all of which he agrees with, but answers them in a personalised and informal fashion:

As for “john the bear” I am just sorry that he has so little faith in his country. He fears that if the UK left the EU our former partners would set out to destroy us. They are not that stupid. They export more to us than we to them. They would be the bigger losers. And they would be in breach of the GATT…

…I should apologise to “blustering colonel” for ignoring his kind invitation to visit Singapore. I have been there many times, the first of them in 1954, so I am not unaware of the immense achievements of Lee Kwan Yu and the people of Singapore. Indeed I only wish that we had had more leaders like him here.

We might have been as successful as Singapore, but we only had one, and she was not leader for long enough.

Whilst Tebbit’s politics may not be seen as always desirable by either this author or many OJR readers, to dismiss them or how Tebbit articulates them is to ignore how he has developed a currently unique relationship with his readers. The closest equivalent may be the ‘ombudsman’ employed by some US news organisations, who uses his or her column to respond to reader/viewer queries and complaints. The main difference between these however is that the ombudsman still retains his or her distance from the reader – he is an emissary of the ‘writer’, embodied in this case by the hierarchy of the newsroom – and responds to missives from otherwise passive readers, but only on his or her terms and in an official – or even officious – capacity.

Tebbit meanwhile does choose what to reply to, but beyond that is an openness to a variety of comments. Tebbit may not necessarily agree with some commenters but still lists some of their more notable comments and responds to them accordingly:

I noticed amongst those posting comments on this site a number of contributors, john the bear cub, Matthew Gris, mark999, frederik and others telling me the EU is a done deal, a good thing, and that I should shut up and learn to love it. Oddly enough, as mickeypee and rapscallion pointed out, none of them explain why we should put up with a government we did not elect and cannot change compelling us to do things which are clearly not in our interest.

Oliver was not convinced by my explanation of why the main parties are pro EU and asked me why Cameron is so, too. Well, I simply do not know. He has not told me.

I thought basset was a bit grumpy. He forgets that I stood down from the Cabinet and refused invitations to go back. And to suggest that I have more influence over voters than David Cameron is a bit unrealistic. If it were true, then perhaps Camp Cameron would ask themselves why.

The views exhibited are in fact varied, despite the political bias one might assume of a blogger who as a rule tends to delete or ignore posts that are not in line with his own views. Steven Duncombe’s fears in 1997 that the World Wide Web would simply facilitate a myriad of ‘virtual ghettos’ or echo chambers* have often been realised many times, yet Tebbit’s blog has become an unlikely alternative – there may be no agreement, but nor is disagreement dismissed out of hand or shouted down. Tebbit allows commenters to disagree with him, and simply disagrees in turn.

How best to contextualise this? Conservative media figures, primarily in the United States, have always demonstrated a strong rapport with their audiences, as demonstrated by the success of right-wing ‘shock jocks’ such as Rush Limbaugh and latterly Glen Beck. Yet this does not take into account, for example, the considerable differences that exist between American and British schools of conservatism.

Equally, it does not acknowledge that right wing broadcast media is precisely that: a powerful figure speaks to a mute but appreciative audience – and it is this authoritativeness as opposed to Tebbit’s openness with his audience that defines this sub-genre. Of course, many ‘shock jocks’ reply to e-mails and letters on their shows, but again this is more akin to the traditional ‘postbag’ section in both print and broadcast media, whereas – as said – Tebbit is much more willing to interact with his readers, without prompting. It is obvious from the tone and the ease that he undertakes this that it is through choice. The writer has become the listener.

It is what Nicholas Carr refers to as ‘Conservative Innovation’, wherein the innovative is combined with the old and established in order to create something genuinely new and promising. Carr did of course refer to this in the context of industrial production, but given its technological nature, it can also be applied to Tebbit’s blog. He combines the conservative with the electronic, the journalistic with the informal, and in doing so, creates a new kind of conversation between him and his audience.

* Stephen Duncombe, Notes From Underground ‘Zines And The Politics Of Alternative Culture (New York: Verso, 1997), p.72

Howard Reich’s profile is a great piece of newspaper reporting. My wife and I were stunned by level of detail and fresh information the Tribune classical music writer found in this decade-old story. [Full disclosure: Pine maintains her personal blog on my wife's website, an online community for violinists.] The Tribune story truly is an outstanding example of what this industry does best. There’s even original video to supplement it online. So why should this work, in any way, be representative of some problem?

The problem wasn’t with anything that happened up until the moment of this article’s publication in the newspaper. The problems developed later, once the piece went on the Web, with the public’s reaction to the story.

A member on my wife’s website sent her a note tipping her to the piece. But the member wondered if the story was “legitimate.” Since the member did not live in the Midwest, she – believe it or not – had not heard of the Chicago Tribune and did not know that it was a newspaper. All she knew was that she’d stumbled onto an extraordinarily long piece and she wondered if it had been commissioned by Pine herself.

It’s too easy to forget that, as powerful as newspaper brands might be in their local markets, most consumers don’t know the names of any newspapers from cities where they haven’t lived. Maybe they know the big national papers, such as the New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal. Heck, even news professional don’t know the identity of many small- and medium-market papers. I’ve lost count of the times my wife and I have tried to link to a newspaper story from our websites, only to be frustrated by our inability to figure out just where in the world the “Pioneer Herald,” or whatever, is located because the publication didn’t bother putting its city’s name on its website.

Brands have power only to those familiar with them. For everyone else, they’re left to make a guess about a publication’s credibility only on the basis of the content they see on that first page they click to on the publication’s website.

In this case, the reader found a tiny byline, with no link to the author’s impressive biography. Much online content is driven by personality, from individual blogs, discussion forum responses, personal profiles to YouTube mash-ups. This truly is a writer’s medium. So an article without a prominent byline, or blogger ID, prompts many readers to wonder “just where is this coming from?” Especially if it doesn’t read like a typical, dry, straight off the wire, conventional news report, as Reich’s engaging profile did not.

Newspapers employ some of the best writers in their communities. They ought to be treating those writers as the valuable assets they are, and providing them the same level of credit on their stories that top bloggers take on their posts. Where are the mugshots, the links to biographies and to other stories written by the same author? That information isn’t there just to stroke a writer’s ego; it should be there to help establish that writer’s credibility with a potentially global online audience.

But what really got me shaking my head were the comments reacting to the article. [More disclosure: The Tribune's comments section runs on the Topix platform, and Topix is a financial supporter of OJR.]

As of when I wrote this piece, the Pine article had elicited more than 160 comments from readers. Some of the comments ripped into Pine and the article, often based on widespread misinformation about Pine that Reich refuted in the piece. (Initial reports said that Pine was run over by a commuter train when she refused to let go of the strap to her multi-million-dollar violin, which was trapped in the train’s door. Reich reported that the strap had wound around Pine’s arm, making it impossible for her to free herself.) Other readers tried to correct them, and flame wars broke out all over the section, as the comments drifted from diatribes on the treatment of Iraq War veterans to arguments about jury verdicts. (Pine won a multi-million dollar judgment against the train agency.)

Nowhere in the comments section, however, did readers hear anything from a staffer at the Tribune. No one with that authority stepped in to admonish the rude, correct those who posted wrong information, or to respond to those who had questions about the story. Without that leadership, the Tribune lost the opportunity to forge a community based on these readers’ common interest in this engaging story. Readers were left just to argue among themselves.

The hostility and confusion in this article’s comments section reflected upon the Tribune’s credibility, to that member of my wife’s website. She, and other readers, saw a leader-less debate. Might they not wonder if the rest of this site lacked leadership as well? Or, if they’d wandered onto another unmoderated forum, of the type that litter so much of the Web?

That someone might jump to such a conclusion on a website run by an organization with the reporting power and local credibility of the Chicago Tribune probably makes no sense to people within the news industry. But few readers are industry insiders. They have little or no concept how this sausage gets made.

I love computers. I love the power of smart computer programming to help enable and encourage smart online communities. But programs alone don’t do squat. Every responsible online community needs, and has, human leadership in addition to useable tools. Newspaper newsrooms need to extend the production cycle of their content beyond the moment of an article’s publication in print. Reporters and editors need to stay engaged with a piece so long as people are commenting on it and linking to it. Otherwise, they are squandering their chance to use that amazing content as the foundation to build the communities that can sustain market success online. Who wants to belong to the fight club?

Yes, I sympathize with overworked, underpaid reporters who wonder how the heck they’re going to get the paper out tomorrow with 10 percent, or more, of their colleagues being shown the door by a panicked management. The last thing they want is another set of responsibilities, especially for articles they’ve already written and published. There’s another paper to get out tomorrow, after all.

That’s why it’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, for the newspaper industry to reform its basic production processes to support online community building, so long as the industry sees itself as the “newspaper” industry.

That’s why it is time for the “newspaper” industry to die.

Words matter. So long as newsrooms see themselves as “newspapers,” the needs of that medium will dictate the organization’s production process. And things like online community management will be left to automated tools, and, maybe, a few supplemental staffers.

I’m not arguing that newsrooms should stop printing papers. They should continue, as they should offer their work in any medium for which there is significant public demand. But the day quickly approaches when successful news businesses will liberate themselves from the term “newspaper company.”

Only then can they end their focus on the old way of doing things and fully accept the possibility of a completely new one. One where reporters become as mildly concerned with production of a printed newspaper product as they have been with the production of the online one until now.

Great content and great tools are not enough to build the large, habitual audience that content publishers will need to maximize their opportunities to make money online, through advertising and sales. Even more than those two things, a website needs great engagement with its readers. And engagement with the public is something that’s been budgeted out of too many newsrooms over the past generation.

It’s time to bring that back. It’s time to do that online. And if a beloved label needs to be sacrificed to inspire the innovation that will enable this effort, so be it. It’s time for the “newspaper” industry to die. Because we all need the news industry to survive.

“But wait, isn’t that what the Web is?” you ask aloud. “Isn’t this whole thing just a digital farm of ‘ideas?’” Fair enough. But to Big Think’s credit, there is quite a difference between the ideas they are peddling—or inviting others to peddle—and, say, this.

Nor is it simply “YouTube for intellectuals,” as some like to call it. Says co-founder Victoria Brow: “We are trying to catalyze a global dialogue. YouTube is a wonderful site but that is not its mission.”

Big Think taps a gamut of experts to wax spontaneous on a range of topics—from atheism to Iraq to the greatest rock bands of all time—and invites users to comment via text, audio or video.

Users are also encouraged to start the conversation with experts, not just react to it. Throw up an idea about vegans, for example, and Moby could come forth with some thoughts. The two-party system? Denny Kucinich may have a few things to say.

And come to think of it, maybe some OJR readers are Big Thinking already.

We swapped e-mails with Brown to find out more about the mission, its future and just how the hell they lured all those experts.

–

OJR: So how exactly does Big Think work?

VB: Big Think is a forum for ideas on the Internet. We catalyze the conversation with the thoughts and words of thought leaders and influencers from many many pursuits (with many more to come) and then we open the conversation to users. Ideas are rated and popular ideas surface to the top.
There are experts on the site (designated by the purple background) and there are users (green background) but both appear on the home page. The top window is an editorial window that Big Think staff puts together each day—it highlights content on the site, usually around a specific question or theme. We have four features in the window at any one time. Each category also has a feature window. People can create ideas with audio, video, text or slideshow. They can comment on others’ ideas. Users can also compare how different people have responded to the same question.

OJR: And how do you plan to keep them coming back? What are you doing for marketing and publicity?

VB: We are greatly enhancing our social networking capabilities. In the next few months, users will be able to find like minded thinkers on the site, see recent activity on the site, see what others have looked at or commented upon, create playlists of their favorite clips, receive updates about content that may be of interest to them, e-mail other users on the site, etc.

We also have an interview platform that we will use to interview guests in remote locations. It is a specific platform created for Big Think that functions with webcams. Transcripts are being added currently to all interviews, so students and others interested in the content can use them as a research resource. We will also be greatly adding to our experts, getting experts in more specific categories so that they may not appear on the home page, but will be searchable in our expert network and will provide users with specific information on specific topics. The broader interviews will continue as well.

OJR: I’ve seen the mission statement, but could you please talk a little about where the idea came from in the first place? Did you see a particular void to fill?

VB: There is a void to fill. There is not an awful lot of thoughtful content on the Internet, and there is nothing that puts the value of user participation in terms of addressing global issues at the fore as our site does. There are a lot of conversations that go on behind closed doors with elite participants, and we wanted to catalyze a global conversation with some of these individuals, then open it up to everybody so they could participate at the same level. Change comes when people feel they have a place at the table.

OJR: Can you talk a bit about your recruitment tactics? What are you doing to get your name out there and attract “experts” to comment on these topics?

VB: We explain the purpose of Big Think, and most people that we are able to reach, really like the idea of expanding the conversation. Also, once several notable individuals had participated, it has become easier to have others accept to participate. We are now receiving requests for people to become experts.

OJR: And once you do attract them, how does the production process work? Where do you shoot them?

VB: We shoot them mostly in our studio in New York, however this will change as we have more and more remote participants, using their own webcams. We shoot on a white background, edit out the interviewer and cut the interview into specific clips on specific subjects. The entire interview will become available in the future. Our effort is to make the viewing experience as useable for Big Think users as possible—i.e. they can watch clips on precisely the topics they want, rather than having to watch the whole interview.

OJR: How about the user-submitted content? I’m reading a particularly heated thread on atheism right now. How is that different from a discussion board on a faith site? In other words, what’s to draw an atheist away from those sites to instead share his thoughts on Big Think?

VB: The user submitted content is growing well. Why come to Big Think? Well, it offers a platform with many types of thinkers, not just ones already committed to a specific view point—so it’s an opportunity to reach many people from many different backgrounds and parts of the word.

OJR: So I imagine you get some pretty outrageous video posts. Has that been an issue? Do you have much of a hand in screening that content?

VB: So far, not an issue. But we are prepared. Inappropriate videos are flagged by users and reported, and we also look through the site. We do want engaging converstations and won’t take things down that are serious arguments so long as they are not illegal or offensive.

OJR: Finally, what’s the allure for advertisers? How do you plan to segment the ad space?

VB: We have a three-tiered strategy:

1. Regular sponsorship and advertising–banners, pre roll, post roll
2. Category sponsorship opportuniites
3. Conversation sponsorship opportunities–a conversation can be sponsored and a corporate entity or foundation or other can submit a request on a specific topic and people to speak to it, and if it falls within our purvue, we will accept and gather other experts on the topic to round out the converation and invite users to weigh in. Very good for corporations who have specific areas of focus that they want attention brought to—and a good market research tool.

OJR: Finally, which topics are emerging as the most popular so far? And which aren’t getting much love?

VB: Business and economy, technology, faith and beliefs, truth and justice getting a lot of attention

Some categories we have are not full of content yet, but they will be in the coming weeks.

The job becomes even tougher for journalists, who want to draw traffic and elicit discussion while maintaining journalism fundamentals. It’s easier to open the doors for an anonymous shouting match than it is to craft a well-sourced and enlightening conversation.

Although we at journalism schools teach our students to write in an engaging and conversational manner, journalism is not casual conversation. The work we do to report and source our information tends to lend our words a formality beyond that offered by someone pulling their words from “thin air.” Ideally, we minimize that sense of formality in an effort to earn credibility for our work without intimidating the reader.

In addition, a reporter’s job, ideally, is to answer questions. If you’ve worked in a newsroom, think back to your first editor, or your basic reporting professor. When he or she told you to check out a lead, what would have been the reaction if you’d responded, “Uh, I don’t know”?

1) “Oh, gee, that’s okay.”
2) “Well, find the heck out!”

Journalists are trained from their first day on the job to find answers. That makes it hard for reporters to turn to their readers publicly and declare, “I don’t know. Help me out here.”

All these factors stand in the way of journalists running vibrant online discussion communities, even as our reporting skills and community know-how make us ideal candidates for those gigs.

We’ve offered dozens of articles on OJR over the years with advice on managing online discussion communities. And, as editor, I’ve tried to ensure that we’ve practiced much of what we’ve preached. Which is why I’m here to explain today a change we are making in the way that we are handling comments on the website.

Since I rewrote OJR’s content management system in the fall of 2004, OJR has required that readers register with the website in order to post a comment on the site. Our registration process is two-step, and requires registrants to retrieve a password from their e-mail accounts in order to log into the site.

In my experience, this system offers the best protection against spam bots and flame war trolls. The registration requirement keeps automated agents from exploiting input forms and the e-mail requirement deters anonymous hacks who want to cause trouble without consequence.

It’s not a perfect system; some spammers employ sweatshop labor to manually labor and submit comments to highly-linked websites. And even those who proudly attach their name to their comments can be jerks sometime. (Do I get some Fifth Amendment opportunities here?)

But, on the whole, I’ve found that this system, employed on other websites, helps keep the signal-to-noise ratio quite high, with a minimum of effort from site editors and moderators.

Yet a high signal-to-noise ratio doesn’t help readers that much when that signal remains weak. And in the relatively small world of the news publishing industry, sometimes people do not want their names attached to comments about their company’s vision and practices (or lack thereof.)

So, today we’re implementing a change at OJR: Readers may now submit comments to the site without registering.

That doesn’t mean we’re opening the gates to anything. Comments submitted by unregistered readers will be held for review before being posted to the site. And those comments will be identified by the poster’s IP address, rather than a log-in or reader’s name. (Unregistered readers will be able to include their name within their posts to OJR if they choose, of course.)

I hope that this alternative provides a way to readers to get introduced to commenting on OJR without having to go through the extra steps of creating an account and retrieving an account password. And that it provides a way for newsroom employees to add to the conversation in situations where they fear reprisals if their names were attached to their comments.

Of course, as journalists those of us reading the site will have to decide how much credibility to give to posts that come from unregistered readers versus those submitted by readers who have registered and supplied OJR with a working e-mail address. (You will know the difference because posts from unregistered readers will include an unlinked IP address, rather than a linked author’s name. Hey, at least we’re not slapping on the label “anonymous coward“.)

Ideally, from my perspective as editor, folks will try commenting using the anonymous system, decide that they like it, then register and becoming frequently contributing registrants on the site.

Spend more than a few days on the Internet, and you’ll see the whole range of conditions that sites impose on posting: from wide-open input forms without captchas to locked-down systems that require credit-card-verified user accounts.

Ultimately, we want more conversation, and less lecturing, on the site, and I hope that this change will move us toward that goal. And, as with everything on OJR, we reserve the right to change our minds — to make commenting either more or less restrictive than we will have it now.

Wanna share your experiences/frustration/success in running an online discussion. Hit the button and talk to us. Even if you haven’t registered yet.

Social media evolves without pause. From politicians editing their Wikipedia entries to bloggers creating “sock puppets” [scroll down linked page for definition] to intimidate online foes, Web users are finding ways to manipulate social media that application designers may not have intended or foreseen.

If you last modified your content-submission rules 10 years ago, they might not address all the conflicts that could arise today on your discussion board or in your comments sections. I’d like to offer a few suggestions for rules that you might want to consider adding to your interactive website.

First, I’d like to credit Damon Kiesow, managing editor for online at The Telegraph in Nashua, N.H., for raising this issue. Earlier this month, he posted to The Poynter Institute’s online-news e-mail discussion list his staff’s discovery that a local elected official was posting anonymously about other election contests and candidates on the paper’s discussion boards. In addition, the official had created at least three other user accounts and was using them as sock puppets in the forums.

Kiesow asked for guidance, sparking dozens of responses from other online journalism pros. Several warned against allowing anonymous posting on discussion forums (ground that is well-plowed for long-time OJR readers), but a few noted that the paper could be exposing itself to charges of hypocrisy, if not legal sanction, if it chose to “out” the official, due to the paper’s published website privacy policy.

Kiesow eventually deleted 14 posts from the three accounts, and explained the move to readers in a forum thread on the Telegraph’s website. However, the paper did not reveal the identity of the official.

The incident should remind all of us to be proactive about discouraging reader abuses, both through communicating with our readers up-front, as well as implementing back-end technical strategies.

I’ve long believed that websites which accept content from users, from comments to discussion boards to wikis, ought to tell those users, in the plainest possible language, the rules that the site expects those readers to follow when they post. (The eye-glazing, mind-numbing legalese of a site’s terms of service or privacy policy isn’t enough.)

If you want readers to use their real names, not to post copyrighted content and to be nice to one another, tell them. On OJR, we ask our readers to click to and abide by our guidelines for writers whenever they submit content to the site. Based on the Telegraph’s experience, I’ve added a few elements to those guidelines, so that we make explicit to OJR readers some of the actions that the Telegraph found that we do not want to see on OJR.

In addition, I’d like to propose a few other elements that I believe are worth considering for a site’s posting rules, but that often are not included.

No impersonation

Insist that readers be who they are, and not attempt to pass themselves off as someone else. If you site allows pseudonymous posting, insist that readers use a consistent handle or account name, and take whatever technical steps you can to keep people from posting under others’ names.

Don’t allow readers to mislead others about their identity, either. Warn readers against omitting information from their profiles or posts that would lead other readers to believe that they are someone other than who they are. Elected officials shouldn’t be allowed to pretend that they are not when posting to a discussion about local politics, to use the Telegraph’s example.

No unlinked multiple accounts

This is the “no sock puppets” rule. On many websites, you should simply prohibit readers from having more than one account. However, if there are valid reasons for allowing certain readers to control multiple accounts (a parent who has one account for himself and others for his kids, for example), they should be linked in such a way that the reader can’t easily turn them into sock puppets, making that individual appear like a crowd.

No offline harassment

Many forum rules prohibit readers from attacking one another within the forum by using profanity, hate speech or other threats. But I’d ask you to consider a prohibition against off-line harassment as well. Here’s what I’ve added to OJR’s guidelines: “We also will not tolerate members who use any means, including offline communication and messages to third parties, to intimidate or harass fellow members over their posting on OJR.”

On another website I’ve managed, we banned members for calling other posters to berate them for their forum messages. No, people should not expect that the words they publish online will not have consequences. But when other posters move past respectful disagreement into harassment, a website should retain the authority to toss those offenders, no matter where that harassment occurs.

Explicit rules for commercial solicitations

Strong communities have a knack for developing into economies. Just take a look at some of the markets that have developed within multiplayer role-playing games online.

In many cases, readers selling and buying with other readers is a good thing. That creates great opportunities for publishers to make money through advertising, sales commissions and lead generation. But one or two bad deals can be enough to poison an entire community. And a growing ad-to-content ratio will likely drive away readers, too.

Don’t wait for trouble. If you anticipate a problem, make explicit to readers where and when they can hawk stuff and services, or look for work or people to hire.

Consequences

Finally, make explicit the potential consequences to readers if they violate any of your site’s rules. Check to ensure that your site’s formal privacy policy and terms of service do not conflict with your new rules, enlisting the help of a lawyer or company legal team to make changes, if necessary.

If there is one characteristic which distinguishes lively, informative discussion communities from others, it is leadership. Show your leadership by taking a fresh look at the rules governing your site, then work with your community to make changes your community needs to prevent situations might hurt the community or its members.

Just think of those users as sources. Who is the ideal person to harness all their information and fashion into organized, relevant information for readers?

You, the experienced journalist — the person who can take 14 pages of notes and sort through them to find the golden nugget that makes a story. Here are some reasons why journalists ought to be the ideal leaders to guide online content communities.

Journalists know how to engage sources

What if you built an online community, and no one joined? It is the fear of every online publisher. To succeed online, you can’t leave the success of your interactive publication to chance. You need to identify and recruit a first generation of participants who will get the conversation started with their comments and insight.

Reporters know how to find these people. In fact, they’ve been finding them for years. Any journalist who’s built a list of reliable sources for his or her offline beat can recruit a slate of initial members for an online community. Whom do you know who has something to say about your topic? A friendly e-mail, phone call or coffeehouse conversation ought be enough to get many of them to at least stop by your website and post a hello. That gets the essential word-of-mouth spreading about your site, too.

Then, once the lurkers who find your site through search engines, social networks and e-mailed links see others posting, they can feel more secure in joining the conversation themselves. But it all starts with your source list.

Journalists know how to ask relevant questions

So you’ve got people on your website: Now what are they going to do? They will need some interesting questions to talk about, to debate. And anyone who passed Reporting 101 ought to know how to ask questions that elicit informative and engaging responses.

That’s all you need to do to start. Ask the questions that require readers to reveal their expertise. What have they done? What do they know? What have they heard? Running an online discussion is much like hosting a radio call-in show: You ask questions, find opportunities for follow-up and attempt to engage as many people in the audience in the discussion as possible.

Ask, listen, respond. Then repeat. The formula’s actually quite simple, and journalists have been following it, for years, to create conversations in print and on air.

Journalists anticipate the effect of their words

Words can inform, but they also can harm. Nothing kills a community more quickly than a flame war that pushes readers into attacking one another.

Experienced reporters ought to have spent time with people from a wide variety of backgrounds, cultures and communities. They have learned something about differing social conventions and attitudes. More important, they have learned what provokes people from various communities and developed the respect to avoid “pushing those buttons,” choosing instead to ask questions about relevant issues in a more sensitive manner.

That experience is invaluable in managing an online community that could be drawing members from all over the world. Phrases well accepted in one community can enflame another. Your online community will allow people to cross the geographic, economic and cultural barriers that have separated them in the offline world. They will need a sensitive, thoughtful and articulate leader to set a tone for their conversation that will help them avoid unnecessary conflict.

Sure, an occasional flame war can help enliven a site. Readers should feel comfortable enough to bust each others’ chops now and then. But you can’t let readers personally attack or intimidate others.

Framing conversation is key. Someone who has spent some time in his or her life thinking about how their words will affect the thousands of people who soon will read them is better prepared for that tough job than someone’s who’s never before spoken to a crowd larger than their high school classroom.

Journalists know how to find the lead

Smart online publishers know that their real audience is not the people posting in an online discussion, but the far larger audience of lurkers who read without jumping in themselves. After all, good journalists don’t write for their sources; they write for their readers. As an online community leader, a journalist can identify the posts and threads that are of greatest potential interest to the largest possible audience and take steps to ensure that lurkers and infrequent visitors easily can find them.

You might start a fresh thread passed on an especially valuable response to an earlier discussion. Or give a valuable post or thread extra attention on the site’s front page or e-mail newsletter.

Online conversations can drift in an indefinite number of directions. But readers will gravitate toward sites where they can easily find useful information, instead of getting lost in someone else’s chit-chat and inside jokes. Journalists are well prepared to shape their communities to deliver for those readers.

Journalists know how to promote

Chances are, someone else already has an online community devoted to your topic. How will you attract readers to yours? Yes, your strengths, listed above, will help. But so will getting the word out.

There’s a good reason why the PR industry looks to journalism schools and news reporters for new hires. Journalists have learned what information other journalists need to write a good story. Running on online community provides you the opportunity to do PR on your own behalf. If your readers are breaking a story or just talking about something that’s off interest to outside readers, send out a press release about it. Organize some offline events for the community, or a charitable effort, that can elicit some coverage. E-mail other Web publishers on your beat when you’ve got fresh information on your site that they do not have, asking for a link. (A friendly, “thought I’d let you know” tone works far better than “ha ha, we scooped you” rudeness, of course.)

Heck, just tell us at OJR about your site. We’re always looking for entrepreneurial journalists and innovative newspaper dot-commers to profile.

Don’t be afraid

There’s no reason to fear, resent or resist user-generated content. If you’ve worried that making the transition from staff publishing to community publishing will require learning a whole new set of professional skills, don’t. The core skills one needs to build an active, informative and respectful online content community are precisely the same skills reporters and editors have employed for generations to become good journalists.

Jump in.

This third installment of Bungie Studios‘ epic, if convoluted, tale of cyborg supersoldier (Master Chief) vs. religious zealot aliens (the Covenant) vs. infectious galactic zombie plague (the Flood) picks up where 2004′s best-selling Halo 2 left off. Though the Xbox Live online features of the previous game were wildly popular, fans complained about the somewhat abrupt and unsatisfying ending.

Unlike say, George Lucas, Bungie was smart enough to listen to its fanbase and cranked out an unexpectedly moving finale to the Halo trilogy with many community suggestions incorporated into the final disc.

One such ardent Bungie fan is pillar of the Halo community Claude Errera, better known by his admin handle “Louis Wu,” (an apropos nod to Larry Niven’sRingworld) the founder of halo.bungie.org [aka HBO]. Though unaffiliated with Bungie, Errera’s site is the most widely-read fansite for the Halo series and garners a jawdropping 600,000 pageviews a day. (He doesn’t sell advertising, by the way.)

HBO’s recipe of game rumors, news, strategy, “machinima” (animation cinema made by video capturing Halo games), fan-made art, contests and forums are the focal point for the Halo community–so much though that Errera’s name appears in the Bungie “Thank you section” of the credits in Halo 3.

OJR spoke to Claude about what makes a vibrant fan community and how to run a good forum site for them.

OJR: You’re thanked in the credits of Halo 3. How long have you been involved in the Halo community and how did you get started?

Claude Errera: I was one of the people who kicked off blam.bungie.org when the first information about what was to become Halo leaked out of E3 1999. So… I guess 8.5 years. I got started because bungie.org covered ALL Bungie games; Blam (and Halo as it followed) was just the next step on the road.

OJR: Why do you think the Halo series has such an active community? What’s most rewarding about being involved with it?

Claude Errera: It’s active for a few reasons – Bungie does a great job of interacting with their fans, which makes their fans want to interact with them. Bungie’s inspired enough enthusiasm with the game that people want to create things for it (artwork, models, fiction, etc), and sites like HBO provide a place to show those creations to the world, which in turn inspires others to do the same. It’s a positive feedback loop.

The most rewarding part of being involved is seeing what people are capable of creating – and helping to get those creations out to the rest of the world.

OJR: How will Saved Films (built-in video capture feature) and Forge (built-in level editor) affect the quality and popularity of user-created content–machinima for instance?

Claude Errera: I think quality will go WAY up, because getting the shot you want will become much, much easier. (We might go through a phase of ‘every angle under the sun because we can’ filmmaking at the beginning, but it’ll settle down; it always does.) I’m not sure quantity will increase all that much; it still requires the ability to capture video from your Xbox to turn it into something that can be shared on YouTube.

OJR: What’s the best thing about the Halo fan base?

Claude Errera: For me, it’s the amazing creativity the fan base is capable of.

OJR: Where could the community improve?

Claude Errera: Well, that seems like a nebulous question. Where could the planet improve? Where could our nervous system improve? The community is made up of individuals – some are positive contributors, some are negative contributors. I don’t think the COMMUNITY can be blamed for either one.

Subgroups (like site forums) can improve their own little worlds by treating newcomers with kindness and respect, instead of scorn; on the internet, we’re usually too quick to flame. That is not unique to the Halo community, however, and the solutions are not different for us than they are for any other group.

OJR: Describe the culture that has grown up around halo.bungie.org. Generally speaking, would you say posters are well-behaved? What are some problems you guys deal with? How did you resolve them?

Claude Errera: In general, yes, the community is well-behaved. We occasionally have people who want to see if they can disrupt things; they actively troll to try and rile people up. We deal with them with warnings to begin with, and then bannings; often, what’s perceived as a problem is really only a misunderstanding, and some gentle guidance is enough to get things back in line. For folks who really ARE a problem, it’s just a matter of teaching the forum regulars that feeding trolls is generally a bad idea. If they don’t get a reaction, they leave.

OJR: Does HBO make advertising revenue? How many traffic do you get?

Claude Errera: HBO has a strict no-advertising policy. We get about 600,000 pageviews/day.

OJR: You could be making tons off Google ads right?

Claude Errera: When we started bungie.org, we had one overriding dislike, among the entire group of founders – we HATED banner ads. I still do. I’m willing to forgo the income to avoid subjecting viewers to them.

OJR: You are doing all the work for free–what do you do in your day job and how to you find time to run the whole site?

Claude Errera: My day job is web design/webhosting. Bungie.org is just a busman’s holiday. I find time… hmm. I don’t know how that happens. I think I must be cheating someone.

OJR: What lessons does the Halo experience teach for creating online gaming communities? What lessons have you learned about running a healthy secondary forum community around a game?

Claude Errera: I’m no expert – but my experience tells me that the keys to managing a successful community are consistency and fairness. Update regularly, give people credit for what they do, stay on top of issues that might build into problems, don’t overreact. If you give people a platform from which to spread their love for a great game, they’ll flock to it.

OJR: Newspapers still sort of treat Halo and other massively successful game franchises as underground or outsider. A lot of the reporting is like “Gee, games make a lot of money, who knew?” Why are journalists so far behind the curve? What would you like to see in mainstream media reporting about games that’s not there now?

I think journalists might be behind the curve simply because gaming became a successful adult entertainment outlet relatively recently. Not that long ago, video games were the domain of kids – I think there are just a lot of writers that haven’t noticed the change. It’s becoming clearer with every runaway success, though.

OJR: Big open-ended question: the future of gaming and online communities-where are we going? You’ve been hosting LAN games for years and have made lots of friendships purely online-how does something like Halo change the way we forge relationships in real life?

Claude Errera: Heh – you lied. You said there wouldn’t be anything long. I don’t know where we’re going – but I think that neither aspect is going away any time soon. Online gaming is getting more and more social; full voice communication, optional video communication, and now tools that let us relive (and share with others) the moments we enjoy together in a game. At the same time, getting together to play with friends in person is so enjoyable that no matter HOW good the online gaming gets, we’ll still find time to do this; there’s nothing like high-fiving the guy next to you when you score a particularly hard-fought flag cap, or throwing a pillow (or something harder) at the guy who just betrayed you for the hell of it.

10 years ago, the idea of teenagers traveling out of state to play games at the house of someone they’d never met in person was unheard-of; not only was the potential payoff unclear enough to make the risk hardly worth it, but parents would never stand for it. Today, however, it happens regularly; we often know our online friends better than we know our local ones, and the bonds formed can be pretty strong.

Halo is showing that even folks who don’t want to play competitively can enjoy companionship online – co-op is a great way to enjoy the campaign experience. All in all, I think that Bungie is lighting the way towards the future of social gaming – we’ll look back at Halo 3 as the beginning of a paradigm shift. (Heh – now THAT sounds a little pretentious…)

Moulitsas complained about a Wall Street Journal article which claimed that Moulitsas’ website held a position on campaign finance reform that is, in fact, the opposite of Moulitsas’ position.

It’s not the first time something like this has happened. This summer, Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly attacked DailyKos over selected comments and diaries that appeared on the site, claiming that the site supported those views, while never noting that those posts were from readers who have no financial or editorial relationship with the site.

With thousands of readers posting diaries on the DailyKos website each week, it’s possible to attribute just about any political position to someone on the website. And there’s the key: the attribution ought to be given to the person on the website, and not to the website itself.

The old newspaper/TV newsroom model no longer applies in Web communities such as DailyKos. If a report appears in the news pages of the Wall Street Journal, a reporters at other papers can (and routinely do) attribute that report to “The Wall Street Journal” — no need to provide the byline of the reporter who wrote the piece. That reporter was assigned by the paper to do the piece, paid by the paper and his or her report edited by paper employees. Therefore, any reasonable person can attribute responsibility, indeed, authorship, of that piece to the paper.

That’s not the way copy gets published on DailyKos, or thousands of other Web communities. On DailyKos, a reader signs up for an account and, after a one week wait, can start posting diaries (i.e., a personal blog) to the website. One of the site’s editors might then read it in consideration for linking to it from the site’s heavily-read front page, but there is no other staff editorial review of the diary. DailyKos doesn’t assign topics to readers and doesn’t pay anyone other than a handful of editors and fellows for diaries, according to the site’s FAQ. Unless a diary contains copyrighted material or otherwise violates the site’s rules for posting, it will remain on the site, even if it conflicts with the owner’s political beliefs.

Attributing a report that appears on a site like DailyKos to the site itself is a bit like attributing a CNN report as “cable television reported today….” Online communities often operate as a news medium, rather than a traditionally staffed news publication. Other news reports about these sites, to be fully accurate, should reflect that fact by citing the individual author of information found on the site, rather than just the site itself.

To be fair, I must disclose that this issue is personal to me, because my wife and I have seen this happen to our websites as well. Doing a Google search last week, I found a professional violinist who was promoting his concert tour with a pull quote from a review attributed to my wife’s violin website.

Except that my neither my wife, nor one of the two other paid writers who work for her, wrote the review. It came from a blog that one registered user wrote on the site.

The potential for abuse is, of course, huge. What’s keeping a violinist from posting a blog to the site, reviewing one’s own show, then promoting that show with a favorable review from the site? Or keeping a candidate from claiming an endorsement from DailyKos based on the diaries of campaign workers and other supporters?

That’s why Moulitsas has declared “no one speaks for Daily Kos other than me. Period.”

Journalists ought to respect that, and sharpen their procedures for attributing information from online communities that allow publication from readers, as well as paid staff. Readers have a right to know the source of the information in your story, which demands that you not overlook, or withhold, relevant context about the identity of that source.

Here’s the checklist I propose:

1) When you find information you wish to cite online, note both the author of the information as well as the website upon which it originally appeared.
2) Make a good faith effort to determine the author’s relationship to the site. Read the author’s profile (often linked from the byline), or the “about us” or FAQ section of the site to see if the author of the information is the publisher, editor or other paid representative of the site.
3) If the author is not, the citation of the author’s information should be to “[the author], writing on [the site].” If the author is a paid representative of the site, then the citation should note that relationship, i.e. to “[the author], [the relationship] of [the site].”

And guess what else? They’re not all housewives. They’re post-grad urbanites, barbecuing bachelors and dorm-room dollar-store shoppers.

A niche community of enthusiasts in the midst of a youth movement. Sounds like a recipe for a social-media overhaul.

And the food sites are catching on, supplementing the protocol e-zine format with souped-up community interfaces, user-generated content and third-party applications for the social networks.

The new-and-improved Chow.com, a conglomeration of Chowhound.com and the late CHOW Magazine, is at the helm of the foodie-meets-techie movement, flanking its vibrant online community with RSS feeds, podcasts, videos, Facebook widgets and, most recently, a soon-to-be-launched “wiki-recipe” feature.

CNET acquired CHOW and Chowhound last year, and the sites joined forces in May with visions of a fervent, ground-up community. Today, they attract two million unique monthly visits. Editor-in-Chief Jane Goldman took some time to talk to us about CHOW, recipe hacking and Online Food 2.0.

Online Journalism Review: First off, could you give me a brief history of the CHOW and Chowhound.com relationship?

Jane Goldman: Jim Leff co-founded Chowhound in 1997, and he sold it to CNET in March 2006. During all those years it was staffed with volunteers, paid for by the founders and a few occasional donations. I founded CHOW magazine with Carol Balacek, who ran the business side. It was completely unrelated to Chowhound. It was a print magazine, and the first issue appeared in November, 2004. CNET acquired CHOW magazine in April 2006. CNET’s intention was to combine the two, and we all started working for CNET in May.

OJR: At first glance, Chowhound.com isn’t much more than a message board on a magazine website, but it seems to be an increasingly significant piece of Chow.

Goldman: The site CHOW.com incorporates editorial content from CHOW and discussion boards from Chowhound. And yes, we’re trying to make the whole thing as interactive as possible.

OJR: Is Chowhound driving traffic to your original Chow content now? Vice versa? If so, how?

Goldman: Chowhound & Chow are driving traffic to each other, but Chowhound is the bigger site, so it probably drives more to Chow. Google drives a heck of a lot to both.

OJR: How did the CNET deal drive traffic to Chow? Was there an immediate impact? Can you compare that with the traffic growth when Chow/Chowhound actually merged in May?

Goldman: The site was launched in Sept. 2006 as chow.com, with the URL chowhound still used (as it still is) as one way to reach the message boards. Chow had been primarily a print magazine, so in one way it was a brand new launch.

There’s another example of two sites that work together at CNET: gamespot and gamesfaq. They live under one umbrella, but they’re quite different.

[Heather Hawkins, Chow's spokesperson, followed up later with additional information: Chowhound traffic was not tracked until it came on board to CNET Networks.  (If you could have seen the previous design of the site, you would see why.  It had plenty of users, but wasn't optimized for things like search, tracking uniques, etc.)  CHOW.com did not have a content-driven website before they came on board -- it was a landing page for some repurposed magazine content and an invitation to subscribe to the print pub.  We can say, though, that traffic is up more than 240 percent for CHOW.com (including the Chowhound message boards) since launch a year ago.]

OJR: Would you have any advice for two other sites thinking about a merger or that might be trying to merge?

Goldman: Considerations when you’re thinking about putting together a couple of sites–about technical stuff & search engine optimization, about branding, about how you can count traffic.

OJR: Chow.com seems to have a younger vibe than its competitors. You’re sort of the urban post-grad to their suburban housewife. Was that the positioning for the print version of CHOW, or did it sort of come with the CNET purchase?

Goldman: CHOW is definitely meant to have a younger feeling. Our users are, in fact, younger than those of the other food media, by a significant margin. Median age for our people is in the 30s; median for most other food properties is in the 40s. Our design is a little less fussy; our stories are a little more offbeat; we care a lot more about interactivity and web tools. And our information and our sources are top-notch.

The whole idea for CHOW magazine was to serve a younger audience. I knew I loved the subject matter, but I couldn’t find any media that covered it the way I wanted to hear about it – food I wanted to eat, subjects I was interested in, parties I wanted to throw. And how to cook. So I started the magazine. And now, thanks to our contributors, I know why ice cream gives you a headache, and how to make my own pancetta. Our users are, I think, often quite sophisticated eaters, but fairly primitive cooks. We explain to intelligent people how to do things they don’t know how to do.  And why they’d want to. And we entertain them in the meantime. We also have quite a lot of men. Traditionally, food media was for women. The Food Network helped change all that. And we’re pretty much gender-neutral.

OJR: I read about a “wiki-recipe” program of sorts that you’re testing. Can you tell me more about that?

Goldman: “Hack a recipe” is a feature that we’ll be launching in a few weeks. You know how you’re always tweaking recipes after you use them a few times? Adding a little more garlic, using a little less butter? Well, now you can memorialize those changes and save your own versions of our recipes. (The originals stay as originally written.) Plus you’ll be able to publish your own recipes on the site. And, of course, other people will be able to hack them and comment on them.

OJR: You seem to have your finger on the social technology pulse, from RSS feeds to podcasts to blog tracking. Any more exciting social networking ideas on the horizon?

Goldman: It’s a lot of work to build a website that does as much as CHOW does. But it’s still got a long way to go. We’ve got all kinds of new features that we’re planning to put into place. More video, more restaurant mapping, more recipe tools, more interaction among the users.

As for as social networking goes, this is a very active, involved community. The quality of the discussions is unusually good. Part of what we do is just to try to keep it that way. We have experienced moderators who work around the clock keeping people on topic — and, occasionally, keeping them civil. And the Chowhounds have been arranging their own gatherings and meet-ups for a long time now. We’re trying to make it easier and offer some tools that will help.

OJR: Has the balance of community features like those and original content such as feature articles and expert reviews shifted at Chow.com? If so, how does that affect your position as editor-in-chief?

Goldman: As editor-in-chief of Chow.com, that means that I pay attention not just to the content and the presentation, but to the entire user experience. So if our Chowhounds are unhappy with the way the search functions, then I have to figure out with our engineers, designers and editors how to make it better. Fortunately, we have some amazing engineers who have excellent editorial sense.

OJR: You state on the site that recipes are at the heart of Chow. Don’t all food sites cater primarily to people looking for a great new recipe? Do you think you approach it differently?

Goldman: Recipes, right now, are the heart of the editorial part of CHOW, and restaurant discussion is the heart of the boards. But the home cooking boards are growing a lot. And we’re working on tools to get the recipes from the boards into the recipe database on the site, so they’re searchable just like the other recipes.

OJR: Finally, ever browse the Chowhound boards for recipes yourself?

Goldman: I definitely participate in the boards. I wanted a particular bottle of wine recently that I couldn’t find. I posted the question and in 30 minutes I had three good suggestions.